The what about Doctor Who

While wondering when the next Doctor Who season will start, news about a spinoff and a revival of a spinoff has been trickling in.

We know now that a new, regular series (season) won’t start until next year, although there will be the annual Christmas Doctor Who episode.

Before then, however, “Class,” a spinoff, will begin airing in October at least on BBC3 and BBC3. It also is scheduled to run on BBC America, but that date is unknown.

The basic story of the eight, first season 45-minute episodes is being pitched as a teen-oriented show revolving around students of Coal Hill School, teens working to navigate a life of friends, parents, school work, sex, sorrow – and possibly the end of existence. If you recall, Clara Oswald in Doctor Who was a teacher at the school.

In a more disputed story, the future of the dormant Torchwood, another Doctor Who spinoff, is being debated.

John Barrowman at Dragon Con. Photo by Ronald Hawkins.

John Barrowman, the star of the series that ran on the BBC and Starz, has suggested that Doctor Who show runner Steven Moffat has blocked the return of the series, a claim Moffat has denied. Barrowman was Capt. Jack Harness in Torchwood after the character first appeared in Doctor Who.

Barrowman has said at conventions and in interviews that he would love to return to the Doctor Who universe. He said he has attempted to bring the series back, but “certain egos” are in the way.

And as if that weren’t enough “what” about Doctor Who comes the news that Doctor Who: The Power of the Daleks, a classic lost Doctor Who episode, starring the second doctor, will be presented in animated form using the program’s original audio recordings, surviving pictures and film clips on the 50th anniversary of its first air date in Great Britain. No complete film recordings of the show have been found and the master negatives were destroyed in an archive purge.

The new version will premiere on BBC America on Nov. 19 and be available the next day on BBCAmerica.com and the BBC AMERICA app.

The six-part adventure features the regeneration, or as it was then called “renewal,” of first Doctor, William Hartnell into second Doctor, Patrick Troughton, as the time lord and his companions Polly (Anneke Wills) and Ben (Michael Craze) do battle with the Daleks on the planet Vulcan. That Vulcan isn’t the same as Star Trek’s Vulcan.